Conducted in the 1990s, these in-depth conversations offer a film-by-film account of Kiarostami’s views of his artistic development from his first short “Bread and Alley” in 1970 to the 1999 feature The Wind Will Carry Us, covering his lesser known, and seldom written about, shorts from earlier in his career, along with the masterworks that made him world famous, such as the Koker Trilogy (Where Is the Friend’s House?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees), Close-Up and Taste of Cherry. The book includes a Foreword by Ahmad Kiarostami, the director’s son, as well as an introduction from Cheshire that contextualizes the interviews and discusses his relationship with the director.“During Godfrey’s several visits to Iran throughout a decade, he formed a relationship with my father that I had rarely seen him having with other writers. I believe this is because of Godfrey’s ability to go beyond the surface; his unique views and interpretations…It is well-known that Godfrey was one of the first people who introduced the Iranian cinema to America and, yet, there is no trace of the usual “exotic” approach…That is what you will find in this book: a refreshing conversation with Abbas that has substance, and is far from cliché.”—Ahmad Kiarostami, from his foreword.“For Kiarostami’s own overview of his early career, I’d recommend Conversations with Kiarostami by the critic and filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker

    

    

      The founding of the first Persian Empire by the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BCE established one of the greatest world powers of antiquity. Extending from the borders of Greece to northern India, Persia was seen by the Greeks as a vastly wealthy and powerful rival and often as an existential threat. When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great finally conquered the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE, Greek culture spread throughout the Near East, but local dynasties—first the Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE) and then the Sasanian (224–651 CE)—reestablished themselves. The rise of the Roman Empire as a world power quickly brought it, too, into conflict with Persia, despite the common trade that flowed through their territories.  Persia addresses the political, intellectual, religious, and artistic relations between Persia, Greece, and Rome from the seventh century BCE to the Arab conquest of 651 CE. Essays by international scholars trace interactions and exchanges of influence. With more than three hundred images, this richly illustrated volume features sculpture, jewelry, silver luxury vessels, coins, gems, and inscriptions that reflect the Persian ideology of empire and its impact throughout Persia’s own diverse lands and the Greek and Roman spheres.   This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from April 6 to August 8, 2022.

    Follow Fadil through his doubts and struggle for faith, his dreams and visions, his pilgrimage to 'Abdu'l-Baha, and his services to the Faith he embraced.A unique feature of this book is the publication of many Tablets 'Abdu'l-Bahá revealed in honor of Jináb-i-Fádil. These Tablets, and some prayers, translated into English, have been reviewed and approved by the Universal House of Justice.Born in 1863, Shaykh Muhammad-Ibráhím was already, by his early twenties, a profoundly erudite Islamic mystic. His thirst for spiritual knowledge and his deep longing to reach the sublime heights of the ineffable, launched him on an arduous quest which led him, often by visions and dreams, to eventually embrace a Faith he once would have denounced as heresy, and to join a community of people he would at one time have considered "unclean". Numerous were the strange occurrences and unexpected events with which the path of his search lay strewn, including the mysterious arrival of a man with a Book which, upon his reading of it, unraveled for Shaykh Muhammad-Ibráhím intricate and incomprehensible questions which had long baffled his mind.Arriving on foot in Akká, Palestine some years later he was rewarded for the purity of his longing and his earnest and steadfast search by attaining the presence of a personage he had seen in one of his exalted dreams -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the beloved Master.

    

    As an adult, Ylenia must come to terms with her deep fear of loss and the significance of how we choose to live our lives.FORWARD is a novel-in-stories, a fragmented and interconnected composite of glimpses and individuals - all of whom remind us of our shared vulnerability, strength, ennui, joy, fear and wilderness.

    Remaining nomadic not only for pastoral purposes but also to pursue other forms of production, they engage in livestock pastoralism, runoff and irrigation cultivation, arboriculture, gathering, smuggling, trading, migrant labor, and guiding illegal emigrants. During periods of political autonomy, Baluch raided other groups and earned a reputation as fierce warriors. Since being conquered by the Shia Persians in 1935, they have replaced raiding with trading and have honed their identity as devout Sunni Muslims.Drawing upon twenty-seven months spent among the men, women, and children of the Yarahmadzai tribe of Iranian Baluchistan, Philip Carl Salzman shows that such labels as "pastoral", "nomad", "chiefdom", "Muslim", and "subsistence" are misleading, because they reduce a complex and mutating multiplicity to an imagined essence. Relating the details of the group's life -- from tent living and the division of daily labor to kinship ties and religion -- Salzman discusses how Baluch shift between decentralized, egalitarian, segmentary lineage politics and centralized, hierarchical, chief-based politics.Maintaining that scholarly conceptions of society have too often overemphasized unitary structural integration, Salzman argues that alternative stances or tendencies can remain embedded in a culture's repertoire, ready to be called forth in response to changing conditions.